Wed, May 23, 2012, 1:09 AM EDT - U.S. Markets open in 8 hrs 21 mins

Dos Hombres: Bad News on Jobless Claims and a Great Call on Silver

Dos Hombres: two guys, two minutes...GO!

Matt Nesto comes out of the gates grousing, albeit with good reason. On what he dubs a "glad to be employed" edition of Dos, he notes that jobless claim numbers came in at an eight-month high at 474k. As much as I enjoy taking the other side, there's really not a joke or good spin to be had with this report. The government may not realistically be able to winnow claims down to a specific number as accurately as the data suggest, but the trend, which is what the "smarts" look at, has turned definitively negative. I don't think you can short the data yet, but if you're long based on the notion of an improving economy, you had best pay heed.

"Sell in May," the oft-mocked trading cliché dating back to the Hoover administration, is looking prudent in 2011; the market is down every day in May thus far. Sticking with his bearish theme of late, Nesto would be looking to take gains where he has them. Specifically, he notes the recent strength in Eli Lilly (LLY) and Boston Scientific (BSX), two long-time laggards bucking this week's sell-off. With both stocks stronger on the week, Nesto would be looking to lock in profits.

After a half-hearted attempt to cheer up my partner, I give props to FOBO (Friend of Breakout) Don Harrold. He dropped into the show from Parts Unknown on Monday and made a brazen call to not just sell but short silver. He took considerable heat for the idea, but he didn't flinch. Viewers can still call him whatever they want, but they can't criticize him for being wrong in this instance; Harrold was interviewed pre-market and put on air midday Monday. Silver is down roughly 20% between now and when his interview aired.

Great call or not, the world is a "what have you done for me lately?" place. That being the case, I asked Harrold what he's doing with his bearish bets now. His response was typically unambiguous. Noting that the Silver ETF (SLV) is down some 30% from highs of just one week ago, he says traders who don't lock in profits on the short side "are smoking weed -- and not the good kind."

Breakout is a meritocracy. Right is right, wrong is wrong and the score is always being kept. Harrold is a day trader and he made a tremendous short-term call for our viewers. 'Nuff said.

Let us know what you think. Write to us at Breakoutcrew@yahoo.com, or comment below.

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30 comments

  • Jeffrey K  •  1 year 0 months ago
    why are they picking on silver so much( 5 margin hikes in 8 days) why not corn sugar cocoa and the list goes on.... hmmmm i wonder
    • Samuel M 1 year 0 months ago
      Fiat money doesn't like to be bullied.
    • Clueless 1 year 0 months ago
      Government makes too much money in taxes on oil. They can't tax silver.
    • A Yahoo! User 1 year 0 months ago
      Keep buying.
  • TS  •  1 year 0 months ago
    And that's all she wrote Folks. I just got stopped out on ZSL with my 6% stop while watching the video. Doesn't look like a good trade either up or down from this point forward. . .
    • Samuel M 1 year 0 months ago
      I'm still in. I'm looking for $25 a share.
    • GmanIV 1 year 0 months ago
      6%?? ZSL ended 25% up Thursday.
    • Samuel M 1 year 0 months ago
      The downside of using trailing stop and stop loss orders. Volatility will do you in. I almost lost ALL my shirts during the flash crash due to stop loss orders. Good thing I got e-mail confirms on my BB and bought everything back immediately at a discount as soon as I made it into the office.
  • Samuel M  •  1 year 0 months ago
    I couldn't take the anxiety anymore. I took my profits and ran. $50K in the pocket on borrowed money. Good luck to everyone else. Got my silver net, now its time to catch some gold bugs.
    • me 1 year 0 months ago
      Fortune favors the bold. Good call!
    • Samuel M 1 year 0 months ago
      Thanks, now to hand over those proceeds to Ethan Allen. Lets see what I can do with GLL now ... ZSL is crowded and scary. I wish more people had joined me over the past 3 days of posting on these comment boards to buy ZSL. They would've been happy. Looks like there is still room for this until SLV reaches mid 20's., but I didn't have the cojones for that.
    • Realist 1 year 0 months ago
      its all bulllllllllllll !
  • shawn  •  1 year 0 months ago
    25% of homes are empty here in townsend,MA. we are in big trouble and jobs are gone for good thank you all for over borrowing and buying all your foregn goods
    • Scott Rausch 1 year 0 months ago
      Maybe if we didn't build a home for every illegal immigrant that came into this country and then allowed them to purchase the house with false income statements, we would not be in this mess. It just goes to show you that you should pay off your home and your cars and not invest other money until those are paid off. The secret to wealth is to spend less than you make, stop paying the bank for your house (mortgages are ok as long as you pay them off as soon as reasonably possible, and live within your means. That means that you may have to have a beater in the garage. Look at the bright side, at least you have the garage. As far as buying foreign goods, the biggest problem is buying $1billion of gas from foreign countries each year. Let's change that first. With regard to other foreign goods, some items are no longer made in the US, and some items, the US is better off not having made in the US due to pollution. Manufacturing is not the only answer, getting our governments and schools automated so that they are much more efficient with the dollars that they get is the answer. That will likely mean job cuts as well, however, if we have a robust economy, we need less government services. Finally, get the federal government in the same place as state and local governments where their budgets have to be balanced or in the black so that we quit needing additional taxes to pay interest. That is in almost no taxpayer's interest, we pay less taxes if we are not paying interest.
    • MadMan 1 year 0 months ago
      Scott Rausch,

      This makes no sense at at all. Illegal immigrants buying homes? buying billion dollars worth of gas? The secret to wealth is to spend less than you make? only if you want to live wealthy at 65 years old. The secret to wealth is to make more money than you spend. Every year inflation is up and value of the dollar drops. Bottom line, if you want to be wealthy and live, you have to take chances with some of that cash sitting in a savings account and increase the percentage 10 times. The market will set you free!
    • Joaquin G 1 year 0 months ago
      @Scott Your illegal immigrant comment is non-sense and non-related to anything else you've said on your post.

      Then, tell us a list of products only made 100% in america that we can buy and generates a profit for the companies. Also list us a few items not made in america and what replacements we can buy instead of those for about the same price and quality. For instance, help me with this non-american products: ford cars, gm cars, any pc, any mac, ipod, iphones, any phone basically... do you have an american only product in there that I can purchase? Make it all-american and the company will go bankrupt because not even you would buy it at their more than 5 times current prices. Or you'd buy a pc for $7k and an iphone for $3000?
      The only way those companies would be able to compete in all-american is by lowering their employees salary drastically to cut costs. It would destroy the american economy and you wouldn't want to work on those salaries. At which point, you would become an illegal immigrant yourself moving to a different country where you could get a decent salary to feed your family and have people like yourself commenting on your situation like they know jack.

      btw, i'm not an immigrant. Happily living in Spain where I hear the same non-sense daily that you've just posted. Every country with high unemployment the first thing they do is to blame immigration and imports for their troubles.

      As for the government... what percentage of GDP is the US govenment cost? It's a sincere question, I don't know. I know in Europe some countries eat more than 30% of GDP on government costs and their economy is in good standing. It might not be a costs problem but an efficiency problem then.
  • J  •  1 year 0 months ago
    Hmmm

    I'm going to use the opportunity to buy some physical silver at a good price. Let's face it, all the reasons for owning silver rather than fiat currency still exist....
    • Sante d 1 year 0 months ago
      Exist only in your mind. Physical commodities are for amateurs.
    • regentmotu 1 year 0 months ago
      Sante D is an @$$. Kneel!!
    • Dave 1 year 0 months ago
      Sante D you will be amongst those being served soup when things tumble and they will eventually. The money changers have you brainwashed. If you dont know who they are then you are ignorant of how the US economy has ben vulnerable since 1913. The answer is abolish the Fed Reserve and IRS. The politics are just a diversion. Ever hear of The Rothchilds family .... didnt think so.
  • Mr. X  •  1 year 0 months ago
    I don't own any fake silver. All mine is safe in my safe. Don't care about this "correction" one bit. It is just the crooks trying to manipulate those who they can deceive.
    Silver should only be at about $35 right now anyway. I expect it to overshoot and drop down to about $30. I will be buying more there and taking physical delivery.
  • DTT  •  1 year 0 months ago
    With GDP growing at 1.8% what did anyone expect. We are probably slipping back into recession with the jobs numbers and the end of QEII. I can't see what is going to driver our economy in the near future. We continue to move jobs and capital off shore and income is stagnant or dropping for most Americans. The consumer is running out of money, both discretionary income and credit.
  • plang  •  1 year 0 months ago
    the calls to sell gold and silver were to brilliant!there had to be a big seller leaking information for this many people to call a sell on silver...
  • richard  •  1 year 0 months ago
    i am holding my metals especilly silver, it will come back with a vengence when the economy collapes. if it doesn't go sky high it will be worth more than the dollar
  • John  •  1 year 0 months ago
    I (re)watched the video on the silver call on Monday. He didn't say to short silver as far as I saw. He said he's been selling into the strength and would not buy at $50.

    Where (or when in the video -- time mark) did he say short silver?
  • J-Rog  •  1 year 0 months ago
    When jobless claims were down everyone said that it was a fabricated propoganda number, now it is real and a reason to criticize the President.
  • Chuck  •  1 year 0 months ago
    Next hot commodity: tulip bulbs
  • Joseph  •  1 year 0 months ago
    What does the price of silver and the suffering unemployed people in America have in common? Why do we continue to add insult to injury? Does anyone care anymore? As long as you have a job the economy is doing well, but as soon as you are unemployed, we are in a recession. What kind of sense does this make?
    Who cares whether silver is going up or down. Look, if you are 50 years old, you could have bought gold for $40.00 per ounce and Silver for 12 bucks, under Nixon when he destroyed the monetary policy and made the privately owned Federal Reserve a very very rich concern!!!! They also called him tricky Dick!!!!
    We have people suffering in America and nothing is being done about it. Our politicians Bailed out wall street and made them super rich again, they gave a selected few great jobs on main street, but the people who live in the alley behind main street continue to suffer and no one cares....
    It is time to find and vote for an independent candidate, (no tea baggers), who want to cut the salary of the politicians in half, put people back to work by developing the infrastucture (high ways), develop solar technology, boycott every oil company that made a billion dollars and paid less than 16% in taxes as well as other corporation who got refunds from their billion dollar profits. We need to find someone who is willing to cover up those nuclear plants in Japan before it is too late!!!! (It is very close to being too late now) Wake up America!!!!
  • Samuel M  •  1 year 0 months ago
    Dos Hombres, if I send my confirms in can a brother at least get a Breakout Shirt?
  • Mort D  •  1 year 0 months ago
    Don Harrold - whutta joke. A broken clock is right twice a day after his relentless rants about silver being overpriced for the longest time. He's been advocating silver a bust for a long time. Instead of giving credit to Harrold, why don't you ask him how much he's been down by betting against silver the past 8 months? Big frickin deal if silver is down to $35 an ounce.. the people who didn't listen to Harrold is still WAY up.
  • First L  •  1 year 0 months ago
    the guy made the call on silver based on some bullshit chart and lucksacked into a huge selloff that happened only because COMEX traders didnt have the money in the accounts to meet the 84% increase in margin requirements. its a fixed market. dont @#$% around in it
  • Boca Trader  •  1 year 0 months ago
    It's great to see Jon Najarian here on Breakout. I really appreciate the coverage on Breakout over the last several days of silver, and now today of the price correction in oil and the first sign of a slight rally in the dollar. Your coverage really helped me decide when to get in and when to exit my short term trades in silver and miners, and is complementing my own research and trading style in deciding whether to initiate new trades or stay on the sidelines during this volatile time.

    The best part is that Jeff Macke honestly tries to tell you what you NEED to know, not what you WANT to hear, because he really doesn't want all the traders out there to get burnt badly. I want to hear the unvarnished truth, tell it to us straight. Don Harrold also speaks bluntly based on his convictions, and I appreciate it.

    I think the concept of reversion to the mean, and oversold or overbought condition, are also important right now in understanding some of the metals and commodity price moves.

    Personally I'm debating where to go from here now that the tide seems to have turned in the metals. There's still more trades to be made in that area but I'd like to expand beyond that to another area where increased volatility might bring some good trading possibilities.
  • Chilly Billy  •  1 year 0 months ago
    "jobless claim numbers came in at an eight-month high at 474k."

    The hottest movie of the season, "Hussein Crushes America" coming to theaters this Friday.
  • First L  •  1 year 0 months ago
    guess don caught wind of the increase in margin requirements.
  • Mitch  •  1 year 0 months ago
    CISCO is still up too

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